If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Librecore: Aiming To Be A Better Libre Spin Of Coreboot

01-19-2017, 05:38 PM

Phoronix: Librecore: Aiming To Be A Better Libre Spin Of Coreboot

Librecore is a new project formed out of the cataclysm within Libreboot in recent months. Libreboot is derived from Coreboot and will aim to provide a fully-open code-base for system firmware but with some interesting twists...

As you may be aware, Minifree (Leah Rowe) contracted with us to port the KCMA-D8 and release it. We performed this work and the KCMA-D8 continues to operate, however Minifree has decided not to pay any of their contract on this work.

We strongly recommend that no person do any business with Minifree or its founder Leah Rowe, as they do not honor their legally binding contracts.

As a result of Minifree's public meltdown, we were part of the initial team that started a community based blob-free firmware project called librecore. We may also start sales of blob-free desktop / workstation systems in the near future to cover this hole in the market.

Now this is [insert any sentence of swearwords here]..
I mean the drama per say was just childish, but to not pay the people the contracted job that was made is just plain bad. Is it just me or does this feel like that's crossing the line (on more than just one way)?

Comment

Now this is [insert any sentence of swearwords here]..
I mean the drama per say was just childish, but to not pay the people the contracted job that was made is just plain bad. Is it just me or does this feel like that's crossing the line (on more than just one way)?

Yowsa, if that's true, it needs to be broadcast far and wide. In the small business world, failing to pay for work is about one of the most despicable things you can do. You'd have to be a lunatic to do business with anyone who has a reputation for not paying. The more I hear about Leah Rowe, the more I realize how poisonous her behavior is to the entire community.

4 likes

Comment

Michael I'll give it to you straight here: I am one of the core developers of librecore and I can confidently say everything you wrote in your article about our project is complete speculative garbage.

The librecore and libreboot projects are completely independent projects that have no relationship **what-so-ever**. The librecore project is a fork from coreboot by some original coreboot developers such as myself with different technical objectives.

So thanks for going and conflating the two projects and making a load of political crap up that has nothing to do with our project and potentially destroying the image of our project by completely misrepresenting why we exist.

I suggest you remove your completely bogus article and instead reach out to us to get answers to your questions instead of writing your speculative pseudo-poltical conspiracy theories.

10 likes

Comment

Wait, you're a Linux, mesa and also a librecore's core developer? Just who are you? You must know a lot of C. Sorry for going off-topic but. Any advance books you recommend about anything related to programming?

Comment

Michael I'll give it to you straight here: I am one of the core developers of librecore and I can confidently say everything you wrote in your article about our project is complete speculative garbage.

The librecore and libreboot projects are completely independent projects that have no relationship **what-so-ever**. The librecore project is a fork from coreboot by some original coreboot developers such as myself with different technical objectives.

So thanks for going and conflating the two projects and making a load of political crap up that has nothing to do with our project and potentially destroying the image of our project by completely misrepresenting why we exist.

I suggest you remove your completely bogus article and instead reach out to us to get answers to your questions instead of writing your speculative pseudo-poltical conspiracy theories.

I never mentioned in the article that the two projects were anything but independent projects of each other?

Comment

Hi Michael, I'm perfectly happy for Raptor to publicly complain. This is only fair, and they have the right. However, there are certain facts that I would like to point out clearly for the community. Some facts for you to include on http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...core-Formation Fact 1: I paid 100% of the KGPE-D16 contract with was 75k USD I did not pay the KCMA-D8 contract which was 15k. Please can you add this information to the article, because right now the article implies that I barely paid any of it. The D8 was a mere extension on top of the D16 and was a few weeks work for Timothy. The article also implies that I was unwilling to pay the remaining 15k. I was actually *unable* to pay. Big difference. I fully paid for the KGPE-D16 contract, and D16 is all that Minifree sells. Most people don't use D8 and it wasn't viable to sell. I would also like to point out that several organisations now use the KGPE-D16 with libreboot. This includes the Free Software Foundation, to host their websites. I personally sacrificed a lot to pull that off. I find it deeply insulting that Timothy causes all this fuss about the D8. The D8 port was also missold to me. I was lead to believe that the hardware was readily available when it wasn't (unlike D16 hardware), so the work for the D8 was more or less a waste of resources. Fact 2: Libreboot is not a dead project. We are currently working on a new release behind the scenes. We've merged an entirely new build system that was written from scratch, to replace the old one (the one that is "stagnant and hard to use" according to the article). It's in the libreboot git repository as I speak, it was merged a few days ago. Please mention this. The new build system is extremely modern, flexible and easy to use. It adds many features which the old build system lacked, such as (but certainly not limited to): * easy ability to build and integrate linux kernel payloads (*hint* petitboot *hint*) * integrates all chromebook-related utils, for rockchip ARM chromebooks * integrates chromeos flashrom, in addition to upstream flashrom * generally better design, more modular, easier to maintain, easier to build * plus a whole host of other advantages * about 10 new chromebooks have been added to libreboot. So much for libreboot being dead, eh? Please also mention that Libreboot is actually abandoning coreboot and will be using Librecore as upstream. This will be covered in my upcoming FOSDEM talk too. We have been quite public about this already, on the Libreboot bug tracker. I would also like to point out, that so far Raptor Engineering has not fixed the bug on KGPE-D16 where above 128GiB RAM becomes unstable to the point of being unusable. Only up to 128GiB works. This is less than what the contract suggests. They also released source code that was broken; memory initialization was broken on most memory modules. It took 6 months after the initial release of the KGPE-D16 source code for them to make memory initialization work, and even now raminit only works with a few modules. This is in addition to other bugs which they haven't fixed. I also have IRC logs of private conversations between me and Timothy, where he states that he's willing to let the free/libre hardware movement crash and burn. This was before the dispute that happened today regarding payment. -- Leah Rowe